Don’t tell me this doesn’t suck . . . a lot . . . high IQ cuts women’s marriage prospects:

High IQ cuts women’s marriage prospects . . . a high IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married while it is an asset for men, according to a study by four British universities. The study found the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 per cent for boys for each 16 point increase in IQ. But for girls, there is a 40 per cent drop for each 16-point rise, according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The study is based on the IQs of 900 men and women between their 10th and 40th birthdays. “Women in their late 30s, who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation, are finding that men are just not interesting enough,” psychologist and professor at Nottingham University Paul Brown said. Claire Rayner, writer and broadcaster, says that intelligent men often preferred a less brainy partner. “A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time,” she said. “In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way.” The study has been published in The Sunday Times newspaper.

While the data clearly shows that the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 per cent for boys for each 16 point increase in IQ. But for girls, there is a 40 per cent drop for each 16-point rise and Paul Rayner’s supposition that women with high intelligence are having more difficulty finding mates is correct, conclusion by Claire Rayner that men prefer stupid women is not supported by the data. While sombunal (some but not all) men may indeed prefer stupid women as their mates, this is not clearly shown in the study data presented here which was concentrated on high IQ. Sombunal men may not be attracted to women who are more intelligent than them, but that doesn’t mean they’re looking for stupid women . . . there are a lot of wives with average IQs out there and even above-average. The supposition that men only want stupid wives woud presuppose that most wives are below average intelligence (and somehow the stupider they are, the more attractive) . . . and, thus, would be most mothers. I know my wife and my mother don’t fit that description. How about yours? It would make breeding increasingly intelligent people rather impossible . . . or is that what people mean by the phrase “dumbing down” when discussing the world? Personally, I suspect average intelligence is rising rather than falling, albeit average intellectual laziness seems to be on the rise among some writers of science articles.

Either way, the findings suck. Of course, the article hints that there may be other factors involved than simply IQ. For instance, here in Taiwan there is an education gap with women having an average higher education than men so there are more PhD women than PhD men. Since the culture has a bias towards prefering that a couple either have equal education or the man having the higher education, this makes it difficult for many high achievement women to find husbands. We have a lot more unmarried women in that category than men and the number of unmarried women over thirty-five is sky-rocketing. Couple this with a delay in finding a mate by women who focus on career and the fact that as a woman ages her childbearing possibilities fall which in turn makes her a less desirable mate as well as a cultural attitude of male primacy and you get a whole lot of things thrown into the mix that are not simply based upon IQ. While the IQ may indeed be a factor, it certainly is not the only factor.